CONNECTICUT DOCUMENTS ON COLONIAL MONEY

A few weeks ago, fellow EACer Henry Hettger contacted me on behalf of another EACer, Jim Myers, who had purchased a group of historical documents which included some from the state of Connecticut. Jim, who was seeking documents related to family history, purchased them in an on-line auction for less than a hundred dollars. While he did not find any records of family significance, three Connecticut state documents caught his attention.

The state documents are signed by George Wyllys, the Secretary of the General Assembly of the State of Connecticut. Since each document contains the phase A true Copy of Record Examind By followed by Wyllys' signature, they are apparently the handwritten copies of the legislative record sent out for printing into public notices.

The first document, dated November 29, 1780, instructs tax collectors to turn in to the state treasury any Continental Bills they had received or would receive in the future. The other two documents, dated December 29, 1790 and May 2, 1791, authorize the sale of copper coins in the state treasury. All three documents are obviously genuine. Not only does Wyllys' signature match his signature on Connecticut state notes, but the May 2, 1791 document has a very clear watermark of the Connecticut state seal.

Talk about a fantastic find; I was pretty much floored. While I've handled thousands of such documents in state, federal, and museum archives, I don't recall ever seeing documents with such direct numismatic connection in private hands. I told Jim he had documents collectors would love to own and that would form the core of a really interesting collection.

Jim is now pursuing a collection with the documents as centerpieces. I suggested that he display the documents and the collection he forms around them once he has enough to make a reasonable presentation. Hopefully, we'll see them in the near future.

So, how did these documents come into the public domain? Erik Goldstein, Senior Curator of Mechanical Arts & Numismatics with The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, noted that in the 1970 the Connecticut state archives tossed out (!) most of their 18 th century paper documents after microfilming it and that a friend had rescued much of it from the dumpster. Perhaps these documents came from that haul.

 

 

 

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